Portsmouth’s frustration

Tuesday, 05/04/2011

by S.J. Maskell, Shoot's Portsmouth blogger

Play-off hopes have now faded into the mathematical mist. All it took was losing at Reading 2–0. A bad day for referee Kevin Friend.

A worse day for Ricardo Rocha. His sending off and the penalty-that-never-was spoiled a game that could have gone either way. Some 4,000 away fans disappointed and frustrated in a stadium that lacks both atmosphere and friendliness.

I am planning a stewarding league table this season – Reading’s are fighting for the relegation spot.

Offered 13th at this time last year, fans would have been doing that hornpipe they did so well at Doncaster recently.

We still have a club, can still go to Fratton and watch a proper competition, without quite so much emphasis on the antics of a few over-paid, somewhat tarnished players, who spend their lives having to justify outrageous wages. Paying such players to keep us in the Premier League was a big part of our demise. It almost cost us our club.

Now it seems our club will still cost us too much. But this time it will be the fans who can’t afford it, not the owners.

I wrote of the season ticket debacle last time. Since then the club has made some concessions for current ticket holders, giving a longer renewal period. That is their sole concession.

Pay cash, cheque or get finance from their approved providers. They are working on getting a credit card facility before the end of the early-bird period, April 28. Negotiations by the Pompey Trust and SOS’s IOU protest seems to have motivated this change.

But not everyone can pay a lump sum in advance. The season ticket – especially the early-bird price - is reasonable. The individual matchday price is not. Not to watch an even more make-shift Championship team in a dilapidated stadium.

At £27 - £30 with an additional £2 ‘administration’ charge (don’t they GET the irony of that?) on the day of the game is beyond the average Pompey fan’s pocket on a regular basis.

Yet that is what many fans who can’t get or don’t want credit will have to pay. These fans are not casual, occasional visitors to be squeezed for more cash. They are proper fans, having to pay for past mis-management. An abuse of loyalty on a grand scale.

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